Efforts to save orchard grow urgent

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SANTA ANA While the citrus on the site gradually changes from green to orange, a series of deadlines is looming regarding the fate of Santa Ana's Sexlinger farmhouse and orchard.

The two most immediate are a Dec. 17 deadline for public comment on a proposed environmental study of the 5-acre site, and a Jan. 15 deadline to submit offers to the property owner to purchase it.

Preservationists are trying to spread the word that the fate of the property – an artifact of the days when citrus ranches dotted Orange County – is at stake.

“There's nothing else like it in the county, and it would be a shame to lose it,” said Jeannie Gillett, who leads a group seeking to preserve the site. “It's very much worth the effort trying to get people aware, and doing whatever they can to help.”

The property should be saved, preservationists contend, because of its characteristics – a productive Valencia orchard with some 230 trees sitting alongside the property's original residence, dating from an era when small-scale citrus growers helped shape Southern California's culture and economy. They envision an urban agricultural center where children could learn about the county's past.

When she died in 2006, Martha Sexlinger, the last member of the family to live on the property, donated it to the Concordia University Foundation and Orange Lutheran High School.

The owners' plan has been to seek city approval to develop the property with 24 single-family homes. The Save Our Orchard Coalition won City Council designation of the century-old farmhouse and Valencia orchard as historic in June. That required a revision of an environmental study that had been prepared. The revision takes into account the historic listing, adds a new alternative and resulted in a name change for the report: “Sexlinger Farmhouse and Orchard Residential Development Project.”

While previous drafts included alternatives ranging from “no build' to development of the site with 24 homes, the new study includes a hybrid proposal.

It would result in the Sexlinger house and an outbuilding being moved to the northeast corner of the property on about 21,000 square feet, keeping about 20 to 30 trees on that portion intact and reducing the residential project to 21 homes.

“I think they're thinking that it's a nice compromise to keep some of the orchard,” Gillett said. “But it doesn't protect the historic resource.”

Proponents of preserving the Sexlinger house and orchard say that, taken as a whole, it shows what citrus production looked like a century ago.

“We feel any hybrid is such a drastic impact on the overall integrity of the property,” said Nick Spain, who has been active in the conservation effort, “that it relegates it to something that you would put on a mantel somewhere.”

Even with the historic designation granted by the city and the impact that development would have on the Sexlinger site, demolition could take place and construction on housing could be approved if the city finds the public benefits of the project outweigh the environmental impacts.

“In order to permit this, the City Council would have to adopt a ‘Statement of Overriding Considerations,' which would list the reasons why the benefits outweigh the impacts,” City Planning Manager Haluza said. “In the case of the Sexlinger Farmhouse and Orange Orchard development, the demolition of the house and orchard would constitute a significant impact to a cultural resource that cannot be mitigated, which would then require a ‘Statement of Overriding Considerations.'”

The environmental review process also needs to be completed, she said, a process expected to take until April.

Since the City Council made its decision, the Save Our Orchard Coalition has given rise to a new organization, The Old Orchard Conservancy. It has received nonprofit status from the state, and is awaiting its designation as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization from the IRS, said Gillett, the coalition's president.

Gillett and Spain, a board member of the conservancy, said that while the organization has raised funds in the thousands of dollars, the cost of the land is in the millions. Finding funding for land acquisition has been a time-consuming challenge.

Spain said the organization would like to get more time to raise money, but said it will need to have an amount in the six-figure range to enter into a purchase agreement.

“The best compromise is if property can be preserved as resource, and the property owners get paid for it,” he said.

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